Mea Culpa
by ncfan
Summary: Of coping mechanisms and shared mourning.


**Characters**: Uryuu, Ryuuken**  
Summary**: Of coping mechanisms and shared mourning.**  
Pairings:** None**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Vague spoilers for Hueco Mundo and Fake Karakura Town arcs.**  
Timeline**: From pre-manga to present.**  
Author's Note**: Well I have finally answered the million dollar question: Why does Ishida Uryuu sew? Considering it's me, you had to know I'd read into that. But just so you know, it's only a small part of the story. Oh, and, naturally, this serves as a companion to _Moments of Dysfunction, Islands in the Sea, _and _In Shadows and Dust._**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

Uryuu could only once recall ever seeing his father cry.

Ryuuken and Soken had different schedules for nap time (Being four, Uryuu still needed a lot of sleep; that was one of the only things his two living relatives agreed on anymore). With Soken, the schedule was quite flexible; Ryuuken tended to be a bit more regimented. A _lot_ more regimented. With Ryuuken, Uryuu slept (or at least, he tried to sleep) in the afternoon from one to three, and the house was usually silent for those two hours.

Of course, Uryuu, having nightmares a lot, rarely managed to get all the way through those two hours.

It was winter, and frost carved intricate patterns onto the bedroom window. Though it was comfortably warm in his bedroom, Uryuu could practically feel the cold seeping in through the edges of the glass windowpanes, and he had never had much use for the cold weather anyway.

His heart was pounding, and he knew exactly, as Uryuu awoke from his, as per usual, horrific nightmare to the sight of the plain white plaster ceiling, in no way comforting. The sight of his ceiling had never been much of a comfort.

If Uryuu put a hand to his chest he knew he would be able to tell that his heart was hammering out of control, uneven spurts of feverish activity that didn't allow for steady breathing. So it was a few moments before Uryuu realized that there was another reason why his throat was swelling shut.

Uryuu rolled over in bed, lying on his side and clutching at the blankets. _It's just a nightmare. Nightmares can't… can't hurt you. There's nothing to be afraid of. _Funny. Telling himself that was never enough to stop him from feeling afraid and desperately alone even after the dream was over and he had woken up to the familiar surroundings of his quiet, blue-walled room.

And it didn't get rid of the lump lodged deep in his throat, either.

Even more insistent were Uryuu's attempts to keep himself from crying. Telling himself over and over again that it had just been a dream only kept the tears at bay; it didn't get rid of them for good. _Just a dream just a dream just a dream just a dream… _The mantra didn't do Uryuu much good in the long run.

He settled deeper into the mattress and prepared himself to spend the remainder of the two hours allotted for napping with his throat and eyes burning.

That, of course, was when the door creaked open, pushed open under the light pressure of a hand, and Uryuu, after feeling a jolt in his chest from the unexpectedness of the noise, relaxed and sat up. He supposed he should have counted on Ryuuken showing up; his father was possessed of an almost preternatural knowledge of when he was upset.

"Another nightmare?" A small, protesting squeak of the box springs of Uryuu's mattress and Ryuuken was sitting down on the edge of the bed. His voice was lowered in a whisper that barely carried; Ryuuken may have simply been paying deference to the quiet, but Uryuu knew there was another reason. Ryuuken always got a bit strange around that time of year, and though his son was already possessed of a vague, ill-defined knowledge as to why, Uryuu wouldn't really put two and two together until a few years later. He just knew that his father, already inclined to introverted, withdrawn behavior, grew especially quiet and sad during the deepest of the winter months.

Uryuu nodded silently, meeting his father's somber gaze and wishing he had thought to reach for his glasses.

"It…happens to all of us, you know." Ryuuken's voice was unusually subdued; he was always a quiet man, Uryuu knew that, but his voice never had that subdued quality to it, not usually. Another reason for Uryuu to dislike winter. Ryuuken leaned over and gently pulled Uryuu into his lap, wrapping his arms around him in a manner completely unlike anything Uryuu was used to.

Some of Uryuu's memories of that day were sketchy. He couldn't recall how long they sat there, silent and unwilling to break the silence; Uryuu could remember that eventually his heart rate got back to normal and the thick, heavy knot in his throat drained away and became meaningless.

Uryuu wasn't entirely sure why his father had started singing. He couldn't remember if Ryuuken had done that of his own accord or if he had asked him to; Uryuu wanted to think that he hadn't asked for a lullaby, since such things were virtually nonexistent in the family home. Lullabies simply weren't sung.

Ryuuken wasn't much of a singer. His singing voice was rough and somewhat raw, the inevitable effect of having been a smoker for, at that point, a few months over thirteen years. His voice sounded like a roadmap of sleepless nights and long silences, but Ryuuken seemed determined to at least try.

There was no longer any memory of the words in Uryuu's mind. He couldn't remember what song his father had been singing or if he had ever recognized it at all. The melody had been light and dissonantly cheerful, though the way Ryuuken sang, it came across in a considerably different fashion than it was intended.

It had all been oddly soothing, as Uryuu's eyes drooped a little bit, sleep being easier to come by now. All too soon though, the illusion of a simple security found in that sanctuary was shattered.

All throughout the progression of the song, Ryuuken's voice had been growing hoarser and hoarser, and eventually, his voice gave out and he stopped, allowing the atmosphere to level back out to utter silence. Uryuu barely noticed; he was half-asleep and couldn't be bothered with such things.

The sensation of a drop of water, then another one, hitting the back of his shirt jolted him back into full wakefulness.

First one, then another. One slid down Uryuu's face, and tasted strongly of salt, but bittersweet at the same time. Uryuu didn't have to look up to know what was happening, and a cold chill passed over him momentarily before vanishing and leaving him, for himself, even closer to tears than before. Almost imperceptibly, Ryuuken's arms around him tightened, as if afraid that Uryuu would disintegrate into smoke in his grasp.

The memory of warm, saline water hitting his hair would haunt Uryuu for years to come.

.

"This can't go on."

Uryuu's face tinged red in embarrassment as Ryuuken put his book down on the nightstand and adjusted his glasses. It wasn't his father's words that made him feel bad. It was instead the weary tone of voice he used, running a hand through his prematurely graying hair and staring off into space, not making eye contact with him.

"I'm sorry," Uryuu apologized sadly, voice cracking slightly. It wasn't his fault he always had nightmares; it just happened that way. He had been trying not to get so spooked by them, too, but that didn't work, ever. "It's just—"

"I know," Ryuuken cut him off, still quiet, the lamp on the nightstand (the only source of light in the room) gleaming behind him. "No one can look at a Hollow attacking a living human or a Plus and ever be the same again. But they are memories." His eyes clouded momentarily, and Uryuu flinched, because Ryuuken didn't look like his father when he did that. "Only memories. The best you can do is try to put them out of mind."

That would have been good advice for someone a bit older, but to Uryuu, it made, to be perfectly honest, no sense, and he looked away, cringing from his father's gaze even though Ryuuken gave no sign that he was angry. It was the idea that he _might_ get angry that made him cringe, having vivid memories of the icy blast of his father's anger. He dipped his head and chose instead to study the deep wrinkles in the bed sheets.

"What is it?"

Uryuu shook his head in frustration, the action seeming strange and out of place on a five-year-old child. "I'm scared," he admitted reluctantly. "I don't want to be alone."

Ryuuken put a hand on top of his head, trying to be gentle. "This is the last time," he murmured, voice still a little raw (Uryuu had seen him outside smoking the nightly cigarette just over an hour ago). "You have to be able to face your fears on your own, understand?"

He nodded halfheartedly. "Okay."

Uryuu crawled under the sheets next to his father as Ryuuken plucked his book back up from the nightstand and kept on reading. Uryuu took a brief glimpse of the text on the page Ryuuken had the book open to. The pages were yellow and slightly faded, quite old, and the ink used to print out the text was different from what was being used presently. The words didn't appeal to him, so Uryuu soon lost interest and instead tried to focus on getting some sleep, lulled by the warmth of the body next to him.

"If it makes you feel any better," Ryuuken's voice broke the comfortable silence just as Uryuu was starting to drift off into dreamless sleep, warm and untroubled, "then you should know that if you are ever attacked by a Hollow yourself, I will personally see to it that the thing is dead as a doornail before it ever gets near you."

Uryuu frowned slightly. That was a little…_unusual_ for Ryuuken, to say the least, who tended to hold off on leveling out pre-emptive death threats as a rule; Uryuu wasn't quite sure why, but just knew that it was a touchy subject for his father. The completely nonchalant way in which he said it, however, was _not_ unusual by any stretch of the word.

"But Father, you said you don't fight Hollows."

"I wouldn't let that stop me."

.

Uryuu picked up the hobby of sewing when he was ten.

He had bought a simple cross-stitch packet and brought it home with him, despite having no prior knowledge of how to thread a needle or even hold one correctly, with the intention of recreating the pattern shown on the packaging of the packet.

The packet was not bought as a recreational device. Uryuu did not start sewing with the intention of enjoying it. Instead, it was a device meant solely to block out memory. Putting needle to fabric was an activity that was relatively simple but required enough of his concentration that he couldn't afford to be thinking too hard about anything else. In short, it allowed Uryuu to forget. Everything.

The only person Uryuu had ever had a healthy relationship with was his grandfather, and now that he was gone, had been gone for two years, everything was falling apart in earnest. For now, taking up the hobby of sewing was more like a nervous twitch than anything else, a refuge in mindless work. Uryuu wouldn't actually learn to enjoy it on its own merit until a few years later.

In the evening, Ryuuken, frowning pensively, curiosity piqued, pushed fully open the half-open door to his son's bedroom. Uryuu was sitting on the edge of his bed, poring, back and neck bent, over a piece of white cloth spread out over his lap. He wielded a thin needle in his hand, appeared to have gotten the thread through the eye of the needle, but was pricking himself with it constantly. Every couple of seconds, his eyes would dart back to what seemed to be the instructions and a picture that had come with the rest of the supplies.

"Ow," Uryuu muttered in a fashion that indicated he wasn't even hearing it himself, as he stuck himself with the needle again, pricking the tip of his finger and drawing only a minimal amount of blood from the skin, a deep, black dot that appeared stark on white skin. He sucked on his finger to stop the bleeding and then got right back to what he was doing. Soon… "Ow."

"Uryuu…" Ryuuken alerted the boy to his presence. "What are you doing?" he asked, trying to keep his voice perfectly detached and toneless, devoid of any inflection that might indicate emotion and set off the powder keg.

When Uryuu stiffened and looked up, the tension was immediately palpable from the defensive set of the young boy's shoulders and the film that came over his eyes when their gazes locked.

The interaction between father and son could by now be identified and sorted out into three different categories: bad days, good days, and very good days. On bad days, it was as though Ryuuken and Uryuu existed only to go at each other's throats, to unearth all of the sore spots, to reopen all the secret wounds and drive them open further, digging in knives of salt (It didn't help that, knowing each other as they did, Ryuuken and Uryuu were both well aware of how deep they had to dig before drawing blood and for whatever reason just seemed incapable of stopping themselves once they tasted blood). On a good day, it was slightly less tense, but it still took only one spark to ignite the flames; the main difference was that on good days, they took whatever steps they deemed necessary to keep from kindling a firestorm and yet another rash of arguments and angry, bitter silences afterwards. On a very good day, the tension was next to nonexistent, and the two could be in the same room without being on the verge of launching into hostilities.

Today, it was a "good day", but like all "good days" in the Ishida household, had the potential to turn into a "bad day".

Uryuu and his father hadn't had a "very good day" since his grandfather died.

"Sewing," Uryuu answered cagily, keeping as brief and succinct as he could. Attempting to elaborate was just far too dangerous.

Ryuuken had gathered that; he was hardly blind. "I wasn't aware that this was a hobby of yours that you particularly enjoyed."

"It's not. I just started today."

Curious enough to risk yet another headache as part of the price paid for arguments and cold silences afterwards, he ventured, "May I ask why?"

Uryuu's long bangs shielded his eyes from view. "To forget," he murmured, unstinting and unsparing of the words. "A distraction."

Ryuuken understood. When there was no one around whom one trusted enough to hold as a confidant, when there was literally no one to talk to, the thoughts tended to pile up. They got utterly unbearable after a while, to the point that one would do almost anything just to absolve themselves of memory, if only for a short while.

Belatedly though, it did bother Ryuuken just a little bit, that Uryuu wasn't willing to talk to him.

.

In order to preserve the fragile and failing peace, even Ryuuken, uncompromising man that he was, recognized that, at times, concessions had to be made.

After the first time, Ryuuken tried to turn a blind eye to the fact that Uryuu had, at a dangerously young age, decided to take up the mantle of the old family profession of Hollow-slaying. Since he couldn't shadow the footsteps of his son every hour of the day and night, Ryuuken knew that there was no use trying to press the issue or trying to force Uryuu to stop.

And he had taken issue the first time he'd caught Uryuu, the morning after he'd killed his first Hollow, and look how well _that_ had turned out. Ryuuken still wondered how he could have had a slip like that, and the shell-shocked look on his then twelve-year-old son's face still made something ominous click in his mind. It wasn't the way Uryuu should have found out how his mother died. It was going to come back to bite him later; he was sure of it.

If anything, the first time it had happened, Uryuu had been incredibly lucky. A small, slight preteen with his formal training left off, far from finished (and Ryuuken wondered if Uryuu had thought about that at all as he had fought), it had been a miracle he hadn't been killed the first time he killed a Hollow as many Quincy far older and better-equipped to do battle had been. It was even more miraculous that he had gotten off solely with long cuts and aching bruises; Uryuu really did seem to have been born with a disproportionate amount of luck. Especially considering that Quincy were known for having incredibly _poor_ luck.

Ryuuken could tell every time when Uryuu had been hunting Hollows and dispatching them with all speed. If he had snuck out at night, Ryuuken could hear his son slipping out of the house and back in a few hours later, and in the morning there would be bags underneath Uryuu's eyes, and his movements were stiff and painful instead of fluid. If it was on the way home from school, then when Uryuu got home all he would want to do was sleep. If Uryuu had just come upon a Hollow unawares, then the next time Ryuuken saw him, he'd still have a faintly wild-eyed expression on his face and jumped at ever loud noise.

Of course, there was one factor that tied them all in together. The smell. That musty smell that hit the roof of Ryuuken's mouth like a sledgehammer, that he knew all too well, for he had always associated it with rabid screaming and the devouring of flesh and soul. Hollows always smelled like they had dug their way up out of the earth from hundreds of feet down. Like something terrible that had been born.

Uryuu was getting better at it. He must have been, to still be alive. There was no teacher, Ryuuken knew, like bitter experience, and it was the best tutor his son could have, but it was a cruel teacher, and Uryuu would either rise to Experience's expectations or die. There was no in-between.

Ryuuken would only break out the bandages and disinfectant and sharply tell his son to hold still and tell him where he was injured if he could smell blood. That acrid stench, it rose even above the smell of Hollows and made his stomach roil. Scarlet welts splattered on white flesh. Usually, Ryuuken discovered, where there was blood there was broken bones but there was little he could do for the latter since there was no way either he or Uryuu could have explained those injuries to the emergency room staff. All he could do was bind the bandages a little tighter and tell Uryuu not to put too much weight on the broken bone in question, if he could help it.

He was losing control of the entire situation, losing control of everything. The most Ryuuken could do anymore was try to keep his son from falling apart at the seams by way of streamline red cracks.

.

When Ryuuken came home and found the house empty, he couldn't say that he was very surprised.

He went through his son's room and found little to be seriously out of place. That meant that Uryuu had taken only a few of his belongings and, at the most, two changes of clothing with him. Ryuuken sighed, and shook his head. When he got a hold of Uryuu's forwarding address he'd have to send some more of his clothes along. He'd be needing them soon enough.

In retrospect, Ryuuken couldn't even remember what they had been arguing about. He had learned how to bury such memories so he'd be able to focus better on work, and this time, Ryuuken had not only buried the memories but obliterated them as well. The dissonance of heartbeats that the verbal grudge match had eventually devolved into still remained though, and Ryuuken put a hand over his heart and felt the jarring vibrations. Too fast, far too fast.

The front door had been left unlocked when Ryuuken came home from work that day. Uryuu had a tendency towards doing that. Wherever he went, Ryuuken hoped the boy would be better about locking doors after him. An unlocked door was like hanging a "Please Rob" sign on the doorknob; at least Ryuuken thought so.

There was no use in trying to figure out where he had gone, no use in calling the police or sitting there and breaking down like other parents might have to find that their child had run away from them.

Ryuuken sat down on the edge of his son's bed and turned over a bit of cross stitch lying on top of the smoothly pressed sheets, fingering the cloth in his hands. A lump rose in his throat, soon viciously quelled and extinguished.

All children left their parents' homes eventually. Uryuu had just done it a few years early.

.

A few years later, and Ryuuken found a reason to be irritated with his wayward son, and an improper way of venting all the anger he had pent-up over the last few months.

"Sit."

"I'm not a dog," Uryuu muttered mutinously, but he sat down on the ground as Ryuuken got on his knees beside him, and started unwinding the bandages around Uryuu's right arm with alarming speed.

Uryuu, like many Quincy, had some knowledge of how to patch himself up if he was injured. Quick fixes were pretty much necessary. But he hadn't wound the bandages around his right arm tight enough.

Ryuuken eyed the long gash on Uryuu's thin, bony arm. For once, the wounds that his son had did not stink of a Hollow, and Ryuuken knew why; they had been inflicted by him. Wounds gotten in training; Ryuuken had seen far worse in his day, but this was bad enough. He started the process of rewinding the bandages more tightly, his cold silence a gauge of his threatening-to-overflow temper.

Uryuu was normally an intelligent boy, even if he was a fool in certain matters. However, today, he seemed incapable of taking a hint. "I suppose you'll be asking why I didn't come to you about this." His voice still had more than a hint of sullen resentment to it, however much Uryuu was trying to submerge it.

"Oh, no." Ryuuken gave a sharp tug on the bandages, then another, then another, each sharper than the last, his voice cold and icy. "It's because you don't trust me." Ryuuken found himself taking a perverse pleasure in how Uryuu flinched at every vicious tug of the bandages, sharp hisses of pain through clenched teeth.

"Isn't that right, Uryuu?"

At times, Uryuu was just as confrontational, if not more so, than his father during times like this, animosity bleeding forth at the mouth and eyes. At others he was strangely passive, saying nothing and taking it all in silence. For the moment, Uryuu said nothing, his long bangs effectively shielding his face from view, and Ryuuken found himself wishing, for once, that Uryuu hadn't chosen to be silent.

.

This absence was a little more difficult to take than all the others. Ryuuken was waiting in the real Karakura Town, one of the few residents left awake (Isshin had insisted because he wanted someone to make sure his two daughters would be taken care of and looked after by someone he trusted if the fighting spilled over into the real Karakura Town), listening to the silence and feeling it pound in on his skull. Was he the only left awake?

Now, all he could do was sit and wait. Wait for the enemy to come, wait for his son to come home.

But now was different.

When Uryuu had left home a few years ago, he had only been a matter of a few miles away, and Ryuuken had known where he had been, could go and find him if he wanted to. Moreover, he had still been able to sense Uryuu's reiatsu, even over the distance from the boy's small apartment to the Ishida homestead.

Ryuuken shot a look at the two sleeping girls on his couch, seeing if they showed any signs of waking up. They didn't.

The silence was still overpowering.

Now, there was no sign of Uryuu at all, as if he had never been at all. Hueco Mundo would not relinquish its captives; Uryuu, and the others who had been with him, would have to find their own way out.

Ryuuken remembered two others who had gone away and never come back, his wife who went out with a smile (though there was no trace of it on her corpse), and his father who strangely retained his odd, humble dignity even when his body was mangled beyond all recognition, and he couldn't be optimistic. If anything, even with Isshin's (at times overbearing) assurances that the kids who had run off would be alright, it was all Ryuuken could do not to give up his son as dead. He had long since ceased to do anything but expect the worst.

The thought stung, as he fingered the old bit of cross stitching in his hands and wondered if he would ever see his son again.

For now, nothing to do but sit and wait.

.

Uryuu frowned at the cold, rubbing at his slightly numb limbs. The sky was gray and overcast, not quite promising rain but perhaps foreshadowing it. The naked branches of trees shivered in the late autumn chill.

"Here." Uryuu hadn't realized that his father was standing behind him until he heard his voice, even and toneless.

Ryuuken was holding out a coat, one Uryuu recognized as belonging to the older man. His father's spare coat. He raised an eyebrow questioningly, to which Ryuuken responded, "I didn't think anything of what you left behind would fit anymore. Take it."

His voice caught at 'left behind'. Just barely audible or noticeable, and Ryuuken had apparently not noticed the slip-up, but Uryuu did, and wondered how he had never noticed before.

The heavy gray coat bore down on Uryuu's back as he put it on; the right length in the arms, but loose at the shoulders. He dug his bare hands into the pockets.

Ryuuken drew his lighter and a package of cigarettes out of his coat pocket, lighting a cigarette and drawing a deep draught of contaminated air. The blue flame of the lighter ignited briefly before being extinguished again. Uryuu coughed and wheezed on the smoke, turning his head away and covering his mouth with a hand. Tension remained palpable, immobile, unmovable.

"Tell me why." Ryuuken wasn't looking at him, staring straight ahead, his eyes glazed, voice trailing off. The gloss over his eyes reminded Uryuu that winter was coming and how much he hated winter. And why he hated winter.

"Sir?" Uryuu felt a cold point deep in the pit of his stomach, fearing what would come next.

Eyes, free of the film that had heretofore covered them, settled on his face, deceptively mild but cool and icy. "I seem to recall," Ryuuken murmured, voice laden down in ice, "something about you agreeing to have no further contact with the Shinigami or their associates."

Patches of red burned at the top of Uryuu's cheeks. "I—"

Ryuuken raised a hand to quiet him, taking another puff on the cigarette before speaking. "Never mind. I know why." A weary, knowing note entered his voice. "Someone you cared about was in danger. And you had to run off to make sure she was alright. You decided to dive headlong into what is probably the most dangerous place in reality, apart from Hell, without ever thinking twice, and, eventually, you and your comrades managed to liberate your endangered friend." He dipped his chin low. "Would I be correct?" Ryuuken asked softly.

"Yes," Uryuu murmured, eyes still slightly widened.

Ryuuken closed his eyes for a long time. "You don't," he murmured, "bear much respect for anything when it comes to me, do you Uryuu?"

A long pause. Uryuu gritted his teeth and waited for the axe to fall.

"It's not over yet," he went on. Brown eyes narrowed, still never settling on Uryuu's face. "I think," Ryuuken whispered, "that you can be forgiven."

Uryuu gaped at him. He couldn't pretend that that wasn't the exact opposite of what he had expected. Then, Ryuuken did, at times, take a wicked pleasure in keeping him on his toes. This was just one of those times, he supposed.

"It's… getting to be winter again, isn't it?"

"Yes," Uryuu nodded, wondering where _this_ strain of conversation was going. Ryuuken had never been one for small talk.

Ryuuken nodded, as though this was a revelation for him. Then, out of the blue, he asked, "Do you ever…" He closed his eyes tightly and licked his lips, a strange spasm going over his face "…go visit your mother's tombstone?"

Uryuu stared at him, the red patches in his cheeks being replaced by waxen whiteness. "I…I…" Uryuu frowned in frustration; he was stuttering, _why_ was he stuttering "…I don't know where Mother was buried," Uryuu admitted in a whisper, eyes lowering to the cold, hard-packed earth.

Ryuuken tilted his head and frowned, looking at him for the first time. "Really?" His voice was slightly disbelieving. Uryuu didn't answer. Ryuuken went back to not looking at him, staring down at the ground, nodding vaguely, voice strangely absent. "Well…" His voice broke off, and Uryuu frowned as he watched his father swallow, hard. "I'll…have to show you some time. You should know."

"Alright," Uryuu conceded in a soft voice, before they fell back into familiar silence.

By their standards, it was a good day.


End file.
